Documents show Lon Johnson, challenger to lead Michigan Democratic Party, has spotty voting record

Lon Johnson, the challenger to Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer's re-election bid, has a spotty voting record in Michigan and has switched residences several times over the past dozen years, documents show.

According to election records, Johnson, now a resident of Kalkaska County, has routinely ignored voting in local elections for municipal offices and has voted only once over the past decade in a school election. But his biggest transgression, from the standpoint of loyal Democrats who will vote on the chairmanship Feb. 23, may be his failure to vote in the November 2010 election when Republican Gov. Rick Snyder was chosen by the Michigan electorate as the successor to Democrat Jennifer Granholm.

In an interview with The Macomb Daily, Johnson explained that he had moved to Washington in the late spring or early summer of 2008 to live with Juliann Smoot, who later became his wife.

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"I was still living in Washington, D.C., at the time (2010) with my wife. Frankly, I was uncertain whether I could vote in Michigan, so I didn't," said Johnson, who also did not vote in the August 2010 primary in which Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero was elected as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

Other votes missed by Johnson: the Aug. 2008 primary, and the presidential primary and August primary of 2004.

Macomb County Democratic Party Chairman Ed Bruley, one of Brewer's staunchest supporters, said he believes the challenger's voting history should give Johnson backers pause.

"He wants to lead the party in 2014 against a Republican governor who he helped elect by not voting," said Bruley, a former county commissioner.

In an increasingly intense chairmanship battle with 18-year incumbent Brewer, Johnson, 41, said that hardball politics may be at play behind the scenes but questions about his voting record are legitimate. As for his failure to vote in local elections, Johnson said frequent traveling and moving from place to place meant that "I most likely wasn't informed at the time."

In fact, Johnson has been on the move since late 2001. In December of that year, he wrapped up his service to the Democratic Party at the national level and the Al Gore presidential campaign and moved back to Michigan, to his hometown of Rockwood in the Downriver area.

But he soon returned to Washington for another stint in party politics in 2003 and in 2004 served as the Michigan director of a Democratic campaign offshoot, America Coming Together.

In 2004, Johnson said he purchased a Third Street home in Royal Oak near the downtown area. But in 2005-06 he was in Iraq, working for the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit group. When he returned from Iraq in the summer of 2006 he lived in a Kalkaska area home built by his grandfather and handed down to his brother.

In the spring of 2008, his future wife, Smoot, landed a job as a premier fund-raiser for the Obama presidential campaign and he moved in with her. She later was appointed as the White House social secretary and as a deputy assistant to the president in 2010-11. Johnson was working for a venture capital firm based in Nashville, Tenn.

In the summer of 2011, Johnson said he "snapped up" a home for sale near the residence his grandfather built, on Bass Lake. According to election records, he first registered to vote in Kalkaska County in September 2011. Some 14 months later he narrowly lost a bid for a state House seat centered in the Kalkaska area after waging a high-stakes campaign funded by donors from across the nation.

At his Royal Oak home, which he still owns, Johnson was playing the role of landlord in recent years. According to 44th District Court records, Lonnie Barton Johnson was issued nine citations over a 2-year period for building code violations at his modest bungalow. The chairmanship candidate said the violations involved minor repairs ordered by the court on the exterior of the house and garage.

He was fined four separate times by the court for a total of $620, according to 44th District judicial records.

Those documents show that in the fall of 2011, Johnson, after experiencing two run-ins with the city's code enforcement officer in quick succession, listed his address as an apartment in Chicago, the city that was home to the Obama re-election headquarters. At that time, his wife had been appointed as a deputy campaign manager for the president.

"My wife was presented with a tremendous opportunity to work for our president in a major way," he explained. "So, we led a lifestyle that wasn't conducive to stability."

Meanwhile, the challenger continues to gain ground day by day in his bid to oust Brewer, who was first elected state party chair in 1995.

On Thursday, Johnson announced that he has wrapped up the support of: Sandra Hughes O'Brien, chair of the Michigan Democratic Hispanic/Latino Caucus; Curtis Hertel, former state Speaker of the House; Alma Wheeler Smith, former state senator; former congressman Bart Stupak; Mark Bernstein, U-M Board of Regents; Joel Ferguson, MSU trustee; state Sen. Bert Johnson; Dan Martin of the Ferndale Area Democratic Club; Chris Kolb of the Michigan Environmental Council; and the Wyandotte Democratic Club.

Johnson's candidacy took off in the last couple of weeks when U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Sander Levin and the four other House Democrats from Michigan endorsed him. Earlier this week, Brewer suffered another blow when 11 top Democrats in Macomb County, where the incumbent has political roots dating to 1983, joined County Executive Mark Hackel in backing Johnson.

About 1,500 delegates will converge on Cobo Center in Detroit for the Feb. 23 state convention, where the 2013-14 party chairman will be elected. Brewer has tried to counter Johnson's onslaught by wrapping up support from grass-roots party leaders at the congressional district, county and caucus level.